


Broken

by Peeeeeeet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3799522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peeeeeeet/pseuds/Peeeeeeet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trap is set for the arch trap-setter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

The TARDIS landed at the edge of the city; after a moment, Ace and her mentor, the Doctor, emerged. The young woman instantly regretted the brevity of her outfit, and headed back inside to grab a bomber jacket to throw around it, while the Time Lord squinted into the wind, scanning the horizon for signs of life.

* * *

They headed down the hill towards fortifications, the Doctor's sturdy umbrella shielding them from some of the driving wind. On the way, Ace quizzed the Doctor about the nature of the distress call the TARDIS had received. But the Doctor was in professorial mode, and turned her questions back to her.

"The nature of the threat is a desperavore," he said. "What does that suggest to you?"

Ace pretended to think for a moment. "Desperation. Despair. It eats despair."

"Yes. More than that. It kills with despair. It seeks out the hopeless, and drains their life force. A wonderful example of evolution, don't you think?"

"If you say so."

"Well, I only mean that if you knew something was on its way that you had no natural defences against, how would that make you feel?"

"Bloody annoyed."

The Doctor grinned. "That's my girl."

"No natural defences? But that doesn't count with us, does it?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor, as usual, was only half-listening to her.

"I mean - we're not so daft as to walk towards this desperavore without a plan, are we?"

The Doctor chuckled, no doubt at some private Time Lord joke.

"Are we, Professor?"

"No, Ace. You and I possess the greatest weapon of all."

Ace hugged the strap of her ubiquitous rucksack. "Nitro Nine!"

"I was thinking of 'hope'," said the Doctor, "but now you mention it, explosives may come in just as handy."

* * *

Within the city walls, the sights that met them suggested they might be too late. The streets were littered with corpses. Ace had always considered that phrase something of a cliché, but the force of it struck her now: the wind was so strong that abandoned clothing blew past them, or swirled in vortices along with the dust and debris. Even the bodies themselves rolled along when a gust caught them. Only concentrating on making forward progress kept her lunch down.

"Will you recognise this creature when you see it?" she shouted to the Doctor, who seemed to be strolling along quite easily, and didn't even need to hold his hat on his head.

"I expect it will be fairly conspicuous, yes," he called back. "Ah. The distress signal mentioned a cathedral. Would that be it, do you think?" He pointed to a stately building on the horizon, incongruous alongside its neighbours.

"Worth a try," she muttered, but the Doctor was already nearly out of earshot.

* * *

The wind died down the instant they entered the cathedral. Ace tried not to take it personally. The Doctor noticed her shudder, and explained. "Standing wave technology. The inhabitants of this world are so used to high winds, they build electronics into the walls to detect pressure and generate a reverse impulse to cancel it out."

"Clever," said Ace. "Anyway, this desperavore. Does it feed on other emotions? Like frustration or mild apprehension?"

"No," said the Doctor. "It finds anything other than pure hopelessness quite indigestible."

"Good," said Ace, and let a little of her fear in. Then she laughed suddenly, a sharp, echoing sound in the grand place. "Sorry. I was just thinking how weird it is that so many alien species are defined by what they eat. I'd hate to find that other species thought of me as a 'baconovore'."

But the Doctor wasn't listening; he was inching up the central passageway of the church, a deep frown on his face.

"I'm just saying, Doctor, what with the haemovores-"

The Doctor interrupted her with a shush. She was about to ask what the matter was, when she saw.

At the front of the church, lying on the altar, was a corpse. Even from this distance she recognised the body, but that didn't stop her sprinting up the aisle to make sure. She ran past the Doctor, only stopping when she came level with the front row of pews.

The corpse was a man, below average height, wearing a dark jacket and check trousers. Beside him lay a straw hat, and an umbrella with a strange question-mark handle. An identical umbrella, in fact, to the one the Doctor behind her was still holding.

"Is it...?" She could hardly form the words.

The Doctor drew level with her. "Yes," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "This is my body."

* * *

Somewhere nearby, an entity smelt the fresh taste of despair on the wind.

* * *

Ace checked the body for vital signs; the Doctor had muttered something about how he couldn't touch it. Something about causing a temporal short-circuit. But Ace realised with some shock that she didn't really know how to tell whether a Time Lord was dead or not. The man on the altar was not breathing, but Ace vaguely remembered something about a respiratory bypass. There was no heartbeat or pulse, but could he survive by slowing his heart rate down, like a hibernating creature? And the man was cold, icily cold to the touch. She looked up to the Doctor for some sign of hope, but he slowly shook his head. And that confirmed what, deep down, she'd known anyway. There was something about a humanoid body that had no life in it: it was different, somehow. It wasn't just the rigidity or the colour of the skin. It was that sense of the uncanny. There was something wrong with the man on the altar. It was as simple as that.

The Doctor sat down in a front pew, and Ace came and sat next to him. "It's definitely you?" Tell me it's a clone. Tell me it's an android. Tell me it's from a parallel universe. Please.

"Yes."

"Well," she said, her own words suddenly sounding very alien in her ears. "It's not all bad news. After all, we all die sometime. Even you."

"True," said the Doctor, softly. "But Time Lords expect to regenerate twelve times. I should still have six new mes to meet."

"Welcome to my world." She heard the wobble in her own voice. She'd wanted to sound... what? Reassuring? No. Just... friendly. The Doctor and Ace against the world. The dynamic duo. But it was all coming out wrong. "So... what do we do now?"

The Doctor gave a barely perceptible shrug. "We've seen no one else alive. We came too late. We should bury the body... and leave."

"And never come back. That way, if you never come here, you can never be a corpse here, right?"

"I'm afraid that Time has a way of thwarting that sort of ambition," he replied wryly.

"Well at least... let's use some of the equipment in the TARDIS to make sure. You wouldn't want to wake up in a coffin one day, having miscalculated one of your little schemes, would you?"

"Very well," said the Doctor.

* * *

The trek back to the TARDIS was quick and uneventful; the Doctor was distracted, using all his mental energy to avoid experiencing the emotions he knew he should be experiencing. He was a little worried that Ace might be feeling enough despair for the creature to detect, but they encountered no trouble; she had an admirable amount of optimism left in her, it seemed.

Once inside, he headed towards the internal door. "I'll get the equipment. You set the coordinates for inside the cathedral." He spent a few minutes gathering together all the bits and pieces necessary to perform an autopsy, all the while studiously avoiding any contemplation on what they were about to do, and the enormity of it all. They should be safe in the TARDIS, but he wasn't taking any chances.

When he returned to the console room with a bag full of macabre tools, the double-thud of the engines told him his timing was perfect. Ace smiled at him as she pulled the lever to open the doors. "Ready?" she asked.

"As I'll ever be," he replied. Taking a deep breath, he strode out.

* * *

The instant he crossed the threshold, he knew something was wrong. For one thing, there was a great commotion coming from outside the cathedral. But how could there be? Everyone was definitely dead. He peeked out of the church's front door, just long enough to see the shadow of something gigantic and monstrous swoop down towards an unfortunate citizen. "Ace," he said, urgently. "What did you set the coordinates for?"

"The cathedral, like you said," she replied, but he could tell from her voice that she knew more than she was letting on.

"Yes, but when?"

"An hour before the distress signal was sent."

A sense of horror overwhelmed the Doctor. "Why did you do that?"

"Like you said. We came too late. I thought we could take care of this baddie, save all these people — and prevent your death at the same time."

"But I told you it doesn't work that way! Don't you see? By coming here now, you've set in motion the very chain of events you wanted to avoid!"

* * *

Just outside, the desperavore stopped in its tracks, the flavour of something intense and delicious making it salivate like never before.

* * *

I mustn't give in to despair, the Doctor told himself. With an almighty effort of will, he swallowed the feeling down. It made him momentarily dizzy. When the rush subsided, he saw Ace walking up to the altar again. As he had suspected, his body was nowhere to be seen.

"Ace. Come away from there."

Ace turned back, a dazed expression on her face.

"Ace, listen to me very carefully. It's vital you don't dwell on it. I know the situation looks pretty hopeless, but that only increases the danger we're in. We must have hope. Say it!"

"We must have hope! But..."

"No, Ace!"

"But there is no hope!"

"There's always hope! Where there's life, there's-"

A thundering crash silenced him. The large stained-glass window behind the altar shattered into hundreds of rainbow fragments as a creature flew into the cathedral. It looked like it belonged in the depths of the ocean: its purple, translucent body gave a clear view of its internal organs; fronds and tendrils swayed this way and that; and the protuberance that must be its head had evolved nothing that could be easily identified as a mouth or set of eyes. The only thing it did that was in anyway familiar was scream.

Ace reached into her backpack for a grey can. "All right!" she said. "Let's see how many of your tentacles I can rip off before you take me down!"

"Ace, this isn't the way. Quell any feelings of despair and it might leave us alone!"

But the creature didn't seem to agree with the Doctor, since of the two of them it was him it was most interested in. It floated towards him, spreading itself out in what the Doctor could only guess was preparation for absorption.

An explosion rocked the cathedral, sending a cloud of plaster down from the ceiling and causing the desperavore to screech in apparent pain. Ace must have thrown a can of Nitro Nine directly at it; the bulk of the creature had shielded the Doctor from the force of the explosion. He saw it turn in anger and advance towards Ace. "No!" He cried. "Not her! Take me!" But he didn't get chance to see if the creature would obey, if indeed it even understood him; a piece of masonry weakened by the explosion chose that moment to fall from the ceiling and strike the Doctor on the head. It was more of a graze than a direct hit, but it was enough to stun him for a moment, and a moment was all he had.

As he tried to right himself, he heard in the distance a delirious laugh: Ace's voice. That dealt a worse blow than the piece of stone. That she should give her life for him was bad enough; that she should be driven to distraction at the moment it happened was too much to bear. He could only watch as the creature swooped down, spread itself out and began to absorb her life force.

He must have been more stunned than he realised, because the next thing that happened was that the creature began to shrivel, collapsing in on itself like a slug being dissolved by salt. Within a matter of seconds it had disappeared completely, and Ace was still giggling.

"What happened?" he managed.

"I'll explain later," said Ace, wickedly. Then, seeing his expression, relented. She took out a piece of paper and handed it to him. It was a printout from the TARDIS console.

"Ace," it read, "this is the Doctor. I need your help to set a trap. Please set the coordinates for an hour ago, but do not tell the Doctor. His despair will act as bait. Taunt the creature; when it tries to absorb you, your own knowledge that you will both survive should be enough to kill it. You will both survive, did I mention that? That part is quite important. Love, the Doctor."

"I was angry at first," said Ace, "since I'm fed up with being a pawn in your little games. But the thought that you were a pawn in your own little game was quite amusing. I don't suppose it will teach you a lesson, but it was worth it for the look on your face."

"Oh," was all the Doctor could say.

"One thing I don't get, though," said Ace. "In an hour everyone will be dead."

The Doctor shook his head. "A redundant timeline. None of that will have happened, except in our memories."

"I thought it didn't work like that."

"Any paradox you can walk away from is a good one," said the Doctor, quietly.

* * *

They played chess that night; the Doctor took an eternity over each move, brooding more than ever. Ace broke the silence. "I wonder when we'll see part three of the trilogy," she said.

He mumbled something, and then looked up at her, his concentration broken. "Hmm?"

"Well, to defeat the haemovores, you had to sacrifice faith. To defeat the desperavore, you had to sacrifice hope. When are you going to have to sacrifice love?"

She'd meant it as an off-the-cuff remark, a cute little aside. But the depths she saw in his eyes suggested the question cut him deeply. She grinned, quickly. "Checkmate!" she said, and ruffled his hair.

In the vortex, the TARDIS hurtled towards the future.


End file.
